Princeton Airport

Princeton Airport (39N/ PCT)

Story by Siddhant Upadhyay

sidd_aviation

Published by Matthew Dawson March 23rd, 2026

Photographs by Siddhant Upadhyay and Princeton Airport

A few miles north of the Ivy League campus that shares its name, tucked into Montgomery Township in Somerset County, New Jersey, sits Princeton Airport — a strip of asphalt that carries a century of aviation history. Identified by the FAA as 39N with a IATA code PCT, the field sits three miles north of Princeton itself, just west of the small borough of Rocky Hill. It is privately owned by Princeton Aero Corp., yet remains open to the public.

Its single runway — Runway 10/28, measuring 3,499 feet by 75 feet of asphalt — is modest by any commercial standard. But the number of pilots trained here, a remarkable variety of aircraft that call Princeton Airport home, it stands as one of the more interesting general aviation fields in the mid-Atlantic region.

Origins: 

The airport's story begins not in the postwar aviation boom, but considerably earlier. Richard A. Newhouse — born Neuhaus — arrived from Germany and settled in Rocky Hill, where he was experimenting with aircraft designs as early as 1911, less than a decade after the Wright Brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk. Among his innovations was a plane of his own design featuring separate floating ailerons at a time when most aircraft still relied on wing-warping for roll control — a meaningful contribution to early aviation engineering. He later established the Newhouse Flying Service at Bolmer's Field, the very parcel of land that would eventually become Princeton Airport.

During World War II, the field's two runways accommodated military aircraft, including B-10 bombers. The airport changed hands over the following decades. In 1964, Webster (Danny) Todd Jr. — brother of future New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman — purchased the airport and undertook its most significant early transformation: paving Runway 10/28 (completed around 1965), constructing the main terminal, and two sets of ten T-hangars. 

Princeton Airways: A Commuter Experiment

During the 1970s and into the early 1980s, Princeton Airport was home to something few general aviation fields ever sustain: a scheduled commuter airline. Princeton Airways connected central New Jersey to Newark, Boston, Washington, and Kennedy Airports, offering daily service and connecting passengers onward to major carriers. By 1979, the airline was operating fifteen scheduled passenger flights to Newark each weekday alone.

The airline's fleet was composed of Britten-Norman Islanders, small, rugged, twin-piston aircraft capable of operating from short runways, and GAF Nomad turboprops, a STOL-capable Australian design well suited to the demands of short-haul regional service. These were not glamorous aircraft by any measure, but they were practical ones, and for a period, they gave central New Jersey residents a genuine local alternative to driving to Newark or Philadelphia.

The operation came to an end when the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) strike of 1981 disrupted national air traffic. Van Dyke halted commuter service and subsequently put the airport up for sale. 

Survival: Struggle to Stay Open

On March 29, 1985, after four years on the market, Princeton Airport was purchased by Princeton Aero Corp., which was founded by Naomi, Dick, and their son Ken Nierenberg.

Today: Training, Turboprops, and a Thriving Ramp

Princeton Airport today is a busy, general aviation facility. In a typical year, it sees well over 39,000 aircraft operations,  an average of more than 100 movements per day, with GA aviation comprising the majority of traffic.

Flight training remains the heartbeat of the field. The Princeton Flying School — formerly known as Raritan Valley Flying School — is one of the most active tenants on the airport, running a Part 61 program that has produced generations of pilots. Alongside it, Elite Flight Experience operates a Cirrus Training Center, with a fleet of over 10 SR20s and SR22s.

Rotorcraft operations add another dimension to the airport's traffic pattern, from R22s to larger S-76/AW139s. Multiple companies, such as Helicopter Flight Services, provide both helicopter flight training and charter services. Analar Helicopter Charter and Platinum Helicopters both operate from the field, offering even more charter services

The DC-3's presence on the ramp is immediately striking. It predates most of the other aircraft at the airport by half a century or more. Parked among modern Cirrus SR22s and PC-12s, N353MM serves as a living reminder of how far aviation has traveled.

Quietly Essential

Princeton Airport will never make the front page of an aviation magazine for its FBO amenities or its IFR approaches. What it offers is something harder to manufacture: character, and a genuine connection to the people who have kept it alive through legal battles, ownership changes, and world events. From Richard Newhouse experimenting with ailerons in Rocky Hill in 1911, to Princeton Airways flying passengers bound for Newark in 1979, to the student pilots practicing stalls over Princeton on any given afternoon, today Princeton Airport remains, as it has for over a century, open for business.